One of those days

Notes on week 890

With these weeknotes I publically track and archive whatever it is I spend my time on.

Last Friday was one of those days. When a bad newspaper article on the Dutch games industry appeared, I knew I had to act. Even though I told myself not to go all-out, I spent a large part of the day researching, talking, thinking, writing and posting on social media. This continued somewhat into the weekend and ultimately resulted in a blog post, that I didn’t publish last week but will push here anyway: Waarom het NRC-artikel over de Nederlandse gamesector niet deugt.

Up to that point, it’d been a rather normal week. For example, Wednesday night Hessel and I resumed our #hobbydev tradition. I worked on my puzzle shooter prototype, doing a (for me) large and complex rewrite of the enemy code, and except for one weird problem that had me confounded for thirty minutes (OK, maybe an hour), this went surprisingly well.

The rewrite makes it easier to create new enemy types, by combining top layers (representing special functions) and bottom layers (representing movement types). They’re blended in different colors, so they look unique without me having to draw dozens of sprites. I also added a slow motion switch, making it easier to take screenshots. Here you see a bunch of enemies falling apart after having been shot!

What else? I…

Worked on my monthly planning (the new ‘moon plan’), although I didn’t quite get it done. I paid extra attention to the schedule for my app book and research project Geometry Girl, which has been dormant for a while and needs to get kicked back into action.

Dropped by the Dutch Foundation for Literature to meet up with the digital-literary committee. We evaluated the first round of projects and prepared for the next.

Met up with Menno, which was good! We talked about each other’s plans and about setting priorities, which was useful for the both of us I think.

Visited Two Tribes to work on RIVE. After having thrown ideas around for a while, and discussing it over lunch, I sat down to write the game’s opening and ending. The scenes are far from finished, but I’m already getting a good vibe from both. I also managed to submit Toki Tori 2+’s metadata to both the US and EU PlayStation Stores. Now let’s see whether they get back to us with… more stuff that needs doing.

Attended the presentation of Walter’s latest novel, Schuld. It was nice to chat with people at his new publisher, with Hassan for the first time in forever, and of course with the man himself, as well as his wife, among others. I’m nearly finished reading the book too, and it’s great as usual, and maybe even a little better.